That is just a European-nationalist POV which is missing the point of what aviation is supposed to be about.
And, BTW, that LFRK notam is practically permanent.
But do we have a God given right to fly and land wherever we please without any thought for others
Ummm, yes we do. If that involves using somebody else’s land we need to make sure that is OK with them, hopefully without any discussion because they’ve opened their airport for public use. If they haven’t done that, hopefully we can avoid their airport and land entirely and go somewhere else.
gallois wrote:
If any of us are a bit concerned that the PN hasn’t been received or are not confident that the right person would receive our delay or cancel message we tend to ask in our PN email, which usually elicits a reply which in turn is confirmation that they have received your PN.
@gallois, what if you still don’t receive a reply? Or if it happens just as above with Dan (you have to nag them a few times)?
And what is the best language option here: a) Google translate and send both versions, or b) just send it in English? I know Peter does b) sometimes.
Thanks!
With Spain France and Italy, and to a lesser extent Germany/Austria, I send both English and local language.
The C+I people almost never reply and mostly this is a rule they follow; they simply do not reply even if they could. So, yeah, PN is basically PPR but a PPR which doesn’t work (unless you phone them up, and in the case of the police it will certainly want to be done in the local language.
But getting back to the topic, no “app” will help with any of this since those authorities will, on principle, not sign up to this. Why not? Because they do not regard their job as a service to the airport!
Refusing to be a “servant” is a deeply cultural thing in some countries. But if you look around you will quickly see that most people fly to destinations with pleasant customer service. Maybe there is a clue there?
Peter wrote:
Refusing to be a “servant” is a deeply cultural thing in some countries. But if you look around you will quickly see that most people fly to destinations with pleasant customer service. Maybe there is a clue there?
Indeed there is, and making sure people don’t make any money without providing something useful at a competitive price (like a hassle free service to somebody choosing to do business with them) is the second part of that puzzle. They can then tell free people spending their hard earned money to “sod off” all they want… and starve in doing so.
Silvaire wrote:
The solution to that is to leave the responsibility for safely of flight where it should be – with the pilot.
That has nothing to do with it. In Norway, that responsibility is always with the pilot on every non public airport. Permission to land doesn’t imply any responsibility whatsoever of the land owner. It only means you have permission to use the land to operate an aircraft. Such is the law. In contrast the land owner cannot prevent you from walking on his land.
On a public airport (within the opening hours), things are different. Then the airport has to satisfy certain criteria that the owner/operator is responsible for. Typically all that stuff that makes an airport “safe” to use. Glide path that isn’t too steep. A runway that isn’t too hilly. Winds that aren’t terrible and so on. And more operational parameters like runway condition, a tower, manned fire station, runway lights etc. Outside opening hours however, none of this apply, and it’s all your own risk. Of course the runway has not changed, but the operational parameters required for a public airport has.
Of course, the owner can publicly say (on a web page or wherever) that everyone are free to use his airport, and many do. Most don’t even bother to do that, and many chose to use MyPPR for information purposes mostly, and to have a place to inform of a unusable runway.
That has nothing to do with it.
It has everything to do with it when you understand that safety and compliance is used as an excuse to justify PPR on an individual plane-by-plane basis, with mandatory briefings of local conditions often held up as important – as per the quote to which I was responding. This when they ostensibly want the same people to use their airport and want to collect those people’s money during the visit.
Of course reality says otherwise, the only effect of PPR is to screw with people, pushing their wallets away, and the safety and legality of the operation is primarily and properly the pilots responsibility, on every flight. PPR is largely a power grab by individuals who are ultimately willing to reduce their income to feel a little more important. It’s a sad state of affairs that people feel that downtrodden and disenfranchised.
Conflict with other traffic is nonsense in almost all cases and can be managed by the pilots. In any case the owner of an airport has no role in managing traffic.
I didn’t mean traffic in that sense. I was referring to other aircrafts (traffic e.g. CAT) that owner prefers to see at his airport. It’s the case here in Croatia last few years with GA practically banned from few airports during tourist season with PPR (no parking) or ridiculous pricing and mandatory (paid) usage of not needed facilities.
Silvaire wrote:
It has everything to do with it when you understand that safety and compliance is used as an excuse to justify PPR on an individual plane-by-plane basis, with mandatory briefings of local conditions often held up as important – as per the quote to which I was responding
Well I think you are a little too short sighted and simple here. In flat and sunny California where the shortest runway is 2km, not many accident can be caused by difficult runways anyway. It’s not like that here. Then if you had a runway and have had an accident or two that in part were caused by inadequate pilot skills or awareness for the overall airport conditions, I think most normal people would start to think about how to prevent that in the future. It’s not that the owner is in any way responsible for the pilot, but he feel responsible, on a personal level, for not preventing disasters when he easily could. The easiest, and often enough measure, is to make reasonable sure no one comes there without at least knowing about the difficulties.
But, if it’s all just an excuse to justify PPR for some perverted reasons, then it’s not PPR that is the problem. Anyway, it doesn’t work like that in most cases. The standard answer is a automated “yes”.
@LeSving has apparently never flown into the Chicken Strip and has a very simple idea of what some public use airports in the US might be like. This one is on National Parks Service land, has its very own Wiki page but oddly enough there’s nobody there to pick up the phone or answer emails. 
Somebody flew a Mooney Mite in there (photo from the net) and apparently there were enough parking spots.
Another one a bit like that which comes to mind is Lake Wohlford. Never attended, privately owned, no PPR, no BS, no ‘duty of care’ or whatever the latest excuse for meddling in other people’s risk evaluation is called. Nobody seems to know who owns it, and it’s officially Restricted on the chart but nobody pays any attention. It’s sort of paved and a guy flies a bigger Mooney out of this one, he must be pretty good and keep it lightly loaded. Maybe he owns the airport but anyway given the runway length he must just ‘fly it off the cliff’
Another is Ocotillo, not so challenging except that it floods heavily and you need to do fly-by to get the motorcycles and ATVs to move out of the way. Believe it or not there is no FBO to call (shock, horror) but you can put your main gear on the surface to check it out in the springtime. Sometimes somebody on a motorcycle will race you as you do so.
The first and last ones are government owned public airports, and all three can be flown into without telling anybody anything. No operating hours unless there’s a NOTAM, and not attended. If you crash it’s your problem.
There are still smaller and less developed airports, but those are pretty good examples of very basic US public use airports where PPR is an unknown and unnecessary concept. And believe it or not you won’t get an invoice sent by email if you land there either, because nobody with any connection to the place will notice that you were there
